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Startup wants to bring the Costco hot dog right to your door - for a 1,100% markup (www.the-independent.com)
submitted 14 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 14 points 13 hours ago (9 children)

The company is called NoTip, which would have me hope that the business pays its drivers a good wage so they don't rely on tips. Without knowing more than this one side, I can't tell if the prices really are outrageous, or if this article is trying to draw people away from a business trying to get rid of tipping culture by wrapping it into the price of the items and paying well directly, the way it should be done.

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  • [–] 17 points 13 hours ago (6 children)

    You can't tell whether $18 is too much for a hot dog and a drink?

    It is.

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  • [–] 5 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

    No Tip founder Jack Chen told SFGate that the numbers make sense, given that No Tip is intended to be a catering program, rather than a way for one person to order lunch.

    I'd need to see the full pricing to make any more judgements but $15-20 per journey plus 25% surcharge seems to be about what delivery platforms charge (in areas where tips aren't common/legal).

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  • [–] 11 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

    A "catering program" that operates by scooping up Costco's promotional loss leaders. This is why we can't have nice things.

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  • [–] 5 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

    Yeah exactly, this is some person with a car and a membership, right? Probably vibe coded an app to order hotdogs and then picks up a bunch and resells…

    I haven’t looked into it at all, but…

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    You don't need a membership to buy food court items, I'm pretty sure. You do need it to get into the store though, hmm. Anyway yeah. And the $10 Costco pizza really is as good as the $30 Domino's pizza.

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  • [–] 2 points 12 hours ago*

    Well, its $18 for a hot dog and a drink, and also the cost of labour and transport to get them to your door, and little bit for admin costs.

    So if, say, the delivery person can do one every 20 minutes, that's $54 of revenue an hour for the company, minus, say, $10 for the actual food/drink items, $20/hr to employ the person, plus 3 x trips at, say, 5 miles per trip at like, 25 cents/mile for fuel and maintenance, so $3.75 for that.... so about a 80-100% markup on cost for basic labour and expenses, which is where businesses generally need to be on markup to keep afloat.

    The other option is to go get one yourself I guess, but if you value your time the costs end up being approximately the same.

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  • [–] 6 points 13 hours ago

    The problem is that booking a private cab for your hotdog without exploiting workers and paying a fair wage to the drivers ends up being very expensive. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for drivers getting a living wage, but IMO the Doordash / UberEats business model only works if you exploit the drivers, and the best thing we can do is to not use those services (or use services that pay a fair wage and don't complain about inflated prices).

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